Don't Is Not the Same as Haven't
by Impractical Beekeeping
Summary: Sherlock's friendship with John Watson is not his first. Circa 1995, a chance meeting one night in the university chapel results in an injury, a friendship, a case, and ultimately, a loss. The first chapter was previously called "To The Victor" when I thought it was a one-off.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

* * *

_Regent's Park, London 2009_

* * *

They've taken over one of the tables at the Garden Cafe and John is absently watching an argument between two squirrels over a piece of bread when it happens.

Sherlock is going on at break-neck speed about the mineral composition of a very specific sort of mud found only in Cornwall. John is listening, of course, but mostly in the uncomprehending way that one listens to the rain, music in the pentatonic scale, or any other unpredictable force. At intervals, he arranges individual crisps on top of the empty bag at tantalising angles, hoping that Sherlock will eat them if he makes their appearance on his side of the table look like a happy accident.

Abruptly, Sherlock stops talking in mid sentence, and not because he has taken the cheese and onion bait laid out before him. He is staring intently at something in the distance just behind John, so John turns to look as well. It's a man in his mid-thirties, perhaps, tall, a bit stooped, and fair-haired. He's wearing a Harris tweed suit in shades of brown and grey. The dog at his side is a retriever of some kind, cautious for all of its leggy, gangling youth. And it would have to be, because its leather harness is the kind with a handle, and the man clutching it is very clearly blind.

John turns back to Sherlock, who is continuing to stare, all thoughts of sediment forgotten. "Sher-" he starts to say, but like a striking snake, the consulting detective's gloved hand has shot across the table to cover his mouth. John pries his fingers loose savagely, desperate to get the taste of leather-and-god-knows-what away from his lips. "What?" he hisses. "It's only a-"

Sherlock holds up an admonitory finger, and pulls his phone out of his pocket, frantically entering text while John waits in frustrated, mystified silence.

After a moment, he shoves the phone across the table. _He can't be allowed to hear me,_ the message in the text box proclaims, punctuated by a blinking blue cursor.

John raises his eyebrows and gestures towards his own mouth. Sherlock is staring at the blind man again, so John laboriously types, _am I allowed to talk?_ He pokes him in the arm with the phone when he is done. Sherlock glances down at his message and nods, making a _but kindly keep it down_ gesture as an immediate addendum.

John leans across the table, doing damage to the remaining crisps and whispers, "So you know this man."

Sherlock rolls his eyes, the word _obviously_ unspoken.

"Fine, okay. So...are we looking at some sort of criminal?"

Sherlock frowns and shakes his head.

The man has proceeded to sit at one of the neighbouring tables, and has opened a book. The dog lies down, placid but watchful, under his master's chair. The blonde stranger runs his fingers over the pages, and John watches in silence for a moment. He seems innocuous enough. "An old client?"

Sherlock crinkles his brow in a way that could be construed as noncommittal, so John forges on. "What, then? It's clear you don't want to be -" John stops, having been about to say seen. He clears his throat. "Observed."

Sherlock nods again, and slides the phone back into his coat. He surges to his feet and glances at John, a look he knows well to mean, _Coming?_

John sighs and heaves himself out of his own chair, collecting their empty lemonade bottles and the crisp packet. On an impulse, he sweeps the untouched crisps off the table where they can be appreciated by the squirrels later.

By the time he's disposed of the remains, Sherlock is away down the path, coat snapping in a wind of his own making. With a backward glance at the stranger, who is still placidly reading, John races after him.

They don't stop until they've reached the Sir Cowasjee Jehangir Fountain. Sherlock puts his foot on one of the steps and pulls out his phone again, scanning for messages.

"What...the..._fuck_...was...that?" John pants, leaning against a basin. Sherlock begins typing a reply to something, and doesn't answer.

"Seriously, Sherlock. What the hell?"

At this, the detective looks up.

"That," he says, "was Victor Trevor." As if that's an answer of any use at all, he turns, hands thrust into his pockets, and continues on his way.

It will have to be enough.


	2. Bitten

**2: Bitten**

* * *

_University, 2005_

* * *

The notion of fleeing to the chapel, when it comes, is struck through with a surprising urgency.

A chapel is meant to be a place of sanctuary. Hopefully, at this hour, also one of silence and solitude. That is something he needs rather desperately. Lying in the dark, splayed like a broken carpenter's rule over his bed, he cannot think past the ticking clock on the table, the discordant voices and arrhythmic footsteps in the hall outside. Never mind the thinking; he can't even _breathe_ straight. If breath is linear. Is it?

No.

_Go away, go away, go **away,**_ he repeats silently, in varied time signatures and intonations, all of them adamant, but in the end, he's the one who has to go.

_Give me a month's supply and I'll throw in some plausible errors in spelling and grammar,_ he'd said to David Finch in the library earlier that day. When he'd opened his mouth in possible indignation, Sherlock amended this. _For verisimilitude. It won't do for either of us to be caught, will it?_ The rules are immaterial to him, of course, but there's no sense in spoiling the deal. It might prove worth repeating.

In two hours, he'd produced a stack of neatly hand-written pages, carefully seeded with common errata and naive conclusions. It was a minor work of art.

Very minor.

Following his knock, Finch appeared in the doorway, pale hair flopping into his red-rimmed eyes, and said, "Oh. It's you." He glanced back into the hazy room behind him and said in drowsy pique, "What is it? You said you didn't need my revision notes."

Sherlock drew the sheaf of neatly handwritten pages out of his coat and snapped them before him like identification papers at a border crossing. "Oh, I've finished it. Didn't take long."

Finch blinked at him. "Shit. What time is it?"

"Nine."

"That isn't possible."

"It is for me." Sherlock handed him the first page, and waited for the recipient of his largesse to scan it.

"Jesus," he said at length, shaking his head. "Okay. Wow." He backed into the room. "Come in."

The room was so dimly lit and smoke-filled that Sherlock had felt an impulse to stoop as he entered, as if it were a cave or a bunker. A rather prosaic cave at that, despite the fairy lights on the ceiling and the Hieronymus Bosch print—a sadly predictable _Garden of Earthly Delights_—over the sofa. Below it sprawled a unfamiliar ginger boy in a paint-spattered flannel shirt and torn jeans. "Hey," he said.

_American, scholarship student, striving to appear bohemian. Dull._ Like Finch, he was well on his way to permanently fogging his already unremarkable brain with cannabis.

There was something almost desperately middle-class in the way Finch glanced apologetically at the biscuit wrappers on the coffee table and the misshapen glass vase on the floor.

_No_, not_ a vase._

Obviously.

"Sorry. Um. Sit down if you like. I'll just go and get them."

He did not deign to sit, but had instead folded himself upright against the wall beside a battered bookcase full of comics, science fiction paperbacks, and glossy remaindered art books with the reduced price tags still affixed. From the stereo, a man's voice mumbled and wailed about unwanted advice and having some sort of complaint.

"You aren't Annie," the ginger remarked lazily.

Sherlock said nothing.

"I'm Marcus," he continued. "You a friend of Dave's?"

"I've just written his psychology paper."

Marcus nodded. "Cool." He looked Sherlock over for a unit of glacial time, and then sank back onto the battered, sage-green sofa. He was wearing someone else's trainers, which was very nearly interesting, until, abruptly, it wasn't.

Sherlock drummed his fingers against his thigh with increasing urgency and pressure until Finch returned, bearing an amber prescription bottle. "Sorry," he said again, handing it to Sherlock. "Can I...?"

Sherlock unscrewed the lid. Thirty pale orange tablets tumbled gently within. "Yes. Good. " He thrust the remainder of the paper into Finch's hand and pushed off the wall, eager to leave.

But Finch stood between him and the door, flipping through the pages at an excruciating rate. It seemed unlikely he was in any fit state to read them.

"Of course I've cited the references." Sherlock tucked the plastic bottle into his coat pocket. "Thanks," he added. "You won't get full marks. That would be suspicious. But you'll pass. Copy it out when you're sober; you might retain something useful."

Finch stepped back to let him by. As he left, the stereo's volume increased, but not quickly enough to cover the sound of a voice saying, "God, he's weird."

Following this, the rest of the evening had been less than satisfactory. His new acquisition was extended-release, so he'd smashed two tablets under a suitably massive pharmaceutical desk reference. That might have been amusing. It wasn't. Because unfortunately, Sherlock hadn't bothered to plan anything past the point of consuming them. He'd hoped that inspiration might be revealed.

It wasn't, and if the pills are having any effect at all, it isn't one he's cognisant of.

For someone with a notoriously keen mind, he has been strangely bereft of occupation. The problem with being (yes, he'd admit it) a bit obsessive, is that, lacking an appropriate (or even inappropriate) subject upon which to focus, the drive remains, inexorable and meaningless. He feels like a cancer, untidy, and consuming (or consumptive). It is a senseless waste of resources.

But it isn't senseless, is it? Not if he defines "sense" in a sensory, rather than an intellectual—

_Oh, shut up._

The problem _is,_ that without a focus, pretty much everything tends to become awful. Every tiny sound, amplified. Every colour, a direct assault upon his optic nerves. Tactile things are far, far worse. It is as if every fibre of his clothing, every skin flake, is magnified to SEM levels: rope-like, monolithic, and gritty. He'd be tempted to rip his clothes off altogether (thus also, perhaps, escaping the pervasive oily stench of Finch's study), but then he'd probably end up fixating on the unavoidable reality of his own body, which could, at this point, be even worse. He'd be disgusted by the sight of a single hair erupting from an arm or a leg, by the sickening shudder of thin skin over arteries.

He could leave. He could go outside, where it is reasonably cold and dark. He could smoke, and out there, where the air isn't quite so dangerously still, it might feel less like he is coating the skin of his face and hands with a greasy, acrid film. There would be no unpredictably-timed feet in the hall—a sound which his stupid brain insists upon interpreting as invasive and threatening—or submarine white noise when he covers his ears to stop the ticking in the moments in between.

Yes.

Like ripping a plaster off a wound, he throws himself to his feet, stumbling in the process because his blood is too slow to keep up. He rushes out the door and down the hall as if borne on a violent wind, out and down the steps, past the shapes of people and things: vague, sharp, muted, and reflective.

Awful.

Crunching down the path (horrid), then whispering over the grass (a different sort of slippery horror), he pauses, lighting a cigarette with trembling fingers. The first inhalation is like a rasping sound or an unexpected stab of pain. It shifts things, subtly alters colour and sound. It's a focus, a filter.

And with it comes a return to words: _No it isn't, no I can't, **no,**_ in a strange rise and fall that resolves at last into the _hey wait_ of the song that had been playing in Finch's room.

That's wretched, so he walks on, fast and relentless in counterpoint to the voice, sucking down the rest of the cigarette as he goes.

He slips into the chapel, which is dimly lit and smells of old wood and dusty stone. It's dark, but not as dark as he'd like. He stalks down the aisles until the pews no longer rise massively before him, each distorted and abrupt in the semi-darkness, despite appearing at anticipated intervals. Now he slows and stretches his hands out to feel the way forward, until at last he sees nothing at all.

Good.

He sits at first, huddled, knees to his chest, but in time, he wants nothing so much as to stretch himself out like a funerary effigy, so he does. The cold, the dark, the hard surface beneath him, all combine to create precisely the sort of blank security he's been yearning for. He folds his hands over his chest, presses his shoulder blades gratefully down into the ancient wood, and sternly overrides the rasping guitars in his head with achingly slow cellos.

After a time, they've become so real that he doesn't hear it at first. Or he does unconsciously, but then he replays it, delayed: the soft sound of the door, the faint echoes of footsteps. The slide of leather soles and a strange accompanying click and patter that he cannot quite identify. He's thankful that, reclining as he is, he won't immediately be discovered when, inevitably, the light is switched on and everything is ruined.

But is isn't. There is just the measured advance of footsteps and their odd accompaniment, like something in a dream. A bad one; a nightmare, because as they approach, he feels unaccountably paralysed. And yet, with the appearance of adrenaline, his brain is thrust into a higher gear. It seizes upon the small, brisker steps, and assigns the word _dog._

So, a caretaker. He'll have a torch. It occurs to Sherlock that he doesn't actually know whether his own presence here falls within the bounds of permissibility. He could—A thousand half-articulated excuses flit before him, as he awaits the inevitable beam of light, but—oh. Even in extremity, he notes that he cannot detect the jingle of keys. Or of a lead, for that matter.

So. A man with a dog, but no lead. Because those jingle, don't they? Alarm has become something else altogether. He's curious. Consumingly so.

Carefully, and as silently as possible, he swings his feet down to touch the floor, hands grasping the oaken edges of his seat. The steps continue towards him, and when they are so close he can hear the dog panting, a voice above him speaks. "There's someone here, isn't there?"

Sherlock's eyes have adjusted to the darkness, so he can make out a faintly sketched tall grey shape (a man) and a paler one below (the dog). The voice is pleasant, tenor and not at all alarmed, merely inquisitive. Something pale, a hand, comes down to light on the side of the pew, questing. "I didn't expect anyone to be here," the voice continues, now with what might be an added note of defensiveness.

It occurs to Sherlock, belatedly, that he ought to say something. "Ah. Yes. Strange place to walk a dog, isn't it?"

The stranger sighs. "It really isn't."

"Isn't it?" Sherlock locates his lighter in his coat pocket and flicks it open. The other man flinches slightly at the sound, and Sherlock can now see that he is tall, has messy, slightly curling fair hair, and the sort of aquiline, smooth-browed face that wouldn't look amiss on a stolen marble frieze. His expression is, however, marred by a faint frown.

"I won't say anything," he says. Disapprovingly.

"About what?" Sherlock asks.

"Clearly you've come here to smoke something, which, incidentally, seems like a remarkably stupid risk to take in a chapel. But it's fine. I'll go." His hand tightens on the—_oh._ On the leather handle anchored to the dog's harness. No jingling; not a lead. Of course.

"Clever, but wrong," Sherlock says, in a rush. "You smelled the cannabis on my coat—not mine, I was merely passing through it, picked up a bit of smoke. You heard the lighter, and leapt to the simplest conclusion. Of course. Only, as it happens, it's quite dark in here. I needed the lighter to see. And it's obvious to me now that light is completely irrelevant to you ."

He springs to his feet, holding the lighter closer to the other man, who looks—what? Baffled? Annoyed? Oh. And that's odd, isn't it? His eyes are a very pale blue, so it's easy to see, as Sherlock advances, that his pupils contract slightly at the approach of the flame. Not much; it isn't very bright. But it's discernible.

"What are you doing?" the stranger says, clearly sensing movement. Sherlock waves a hand before him, just to be sure. His eyes don't track the motion.

"It's cortical blindness, isn't it?" he breathes. "Fascinating."

"Yes, of course." He sighs again. "I've no idea _how_ you know that, or why you should care, but it is. Now if you don't mind—" As he speaks, he pulls away from Sherlock, who, drawn by the siren call of new information, moves to stop him—

—only to tread on the dog. Its paw, to be precise.

There's an agonised yelp like a squeaky boot on linoleum, a growl, and an abruptly searing pain in Sherlock's calf before he has time to collect himself. He twists away and falls backwards into the pew, striking his head against the side.

"Oh god," he hears from the diminishing space above him. "Oh hell."

* * *

**Notes:**

So, **eohippus** is writing an excellent story about Sherlock's past, and reading it reminded me that Victor Trevor is a character worth revisiting. I had invented a blind Victor, and then I mostly forgot about him. So yes, you might have read the prologue before I decided to expand the premise. I have no idea what the total length of this story will be, or how long it will take me to complete. I'll be working on TTDND at the same time. For now, assume this occurred in the same universe as _Songs of Expedience_. Thanks for reading!


	3. Someone to Talk To

**3: Someone To Talk To**

* * *

Sherlock does not so much lose consciousness as briefly suspend it. When he opens his eyes, of course, it is still dark. He is lying on his back, and something damp is sponging his face.

"Stop it, Gladys!" a man's voice says, and cool dry fingers replace what he now realises must have been the dog's tongue. His facial muscles flinch beneath the hand carefully investigating his forehead, and the voice says fervently, "Oh, thank god."

"Interesting name for a dog," Sherlock remarks, raising his own hand with some effort to scrub at the dampest bits of his face.

"Never mind that! Are you all right?"

He runs his fingers over the back of his skull and silently reviews the properties of several minerals (including atomic weights), the names of the railway stations between the university and London, and the date. He has no idea who the current Prime Minister is, but then it occurs to him that he's never bothered to find out, so that's fine. "Yes," he says, with authority. He sits up.

"Because I'm afraid you've hit your head—"

"It's fine. Really."

"—and all because my dog bit your leg. She's never done that before. I'm so sorry! Are you in pain?"

"Yes," Sherlock says honestly, after a moment of reflection. He pushes up his trouser leg and attempts to examine the wound by feel. "But I don't think anything's missing."

"Are you bleeding?"

"If I am, it's not much."

"Do you want me to get someone?" the stranger asks.

"I'd rather you didn't," Sherlock says, thinking of any number of reasons why he'd rather not come under medical scrutiny. "But perhaps you can help me feel around on the floor for my lighter."

"Of course," the other agrees. "Gladys, lie down."

The two of them creep over the dusty stone, until at last, with an exclamation of triumph, the lighter is found.

"Thanks," Sherlock says, and flicks it open. He stretches his leg out and notes that it appears to be more bruised than anything. In the time that has passed during their search, the pain has receded to tolerable levels. "It looks as if she's only just broken the skin," he reports. "Given Gladys' occupation, I think we can rule out any possibility of rabies."

"Absolutely. Her life has been a dull one. She eats, sleeps, and tries to keep me from stepping into traffic. I think this is the most excitement she's ever had."

Sherlock pulls his trouser leg down, and flicks the lighter closed. "I did tread on her foot. She had every reason to bite me."

"She was startled, that's all. She seems to be sleeping now," the other man says. Indeed, a faint whistling snore is emanating from the floor by their feet. "I'm terribly sorry, but in all the commotion, I quite forgot to ask your name."

"Sherlock Holmes."

"Victor Trevor."

"So, Victor," Sherlock says dryly, after a long silence. "I'm not good with small talk at the best of times, and this situation falls well outside the bounds of the little etiquette I've managed to retain—"

Victor laughs. "You don't think someone, somewhere has written _The Young Gentleman's Guide to Being Bitten?_"

"I suppose not. Seems a shame." Sherlock had originally intended to say, _but really, I think I'd better go now_. He doesn't.

"I'll have to add writing that book to my list of things to do, then," Victor says. "I admit I am a bit curious about what you were doing here all alone in, as you say, the dark. I come here fairly often, and this is the first time I've encountered anyone at this hour."

Sherlock shrugs, pointlessly, as no one will see him. "I fancied a change of scenery. Thought I'd be alone." After a moment's thought, he adds "You weren't here to _pray,_ were you?"

"Me? No. I'm a bit undecided on the whole deity thing, to be honest." Sherlock imagines a sheepish smile as he says it.

Then he wonders what it must be like to never know what other people's faces are doing. It would be worse than telephones.

"No. I come here to get away from other people," Victor clarifies. "If I don't escape occasionally, I find them unbearable."

"A sentiment I share," Sherlock agrees. "Most people are hateful, boring, or both."

"That's an extreme viewpoint."

"Not really. So many of them are concerned with things that don't really matter."

"True, I suppose. What are you concerned with, then?"

"Answers."

"To what?"

"Anything. Everything." Sherlock considers. "Three weeks ago, a man was found dead, in a tree, twenty miles from here. No signs of physical trauma, they say. But if I could see the body, perhaps I'd know how he got there." He clasps his hands together and adds, more slowly, "Puzzles interest me. Crime interests me."

"In an intellectual, rather than a vocational capacity, I hope," Victor says. He doesn't sound particularly alarmed.

"Very much so. Take murder. Forensic science is still in its infancy because most people are terribly unobservant. They see things, but they fail to comprehend them. As a result, murderers run free. Even some of the stupid sort."

"Whereas you are unusually observant, aren't you? Most people are made very uncomfortable by the fact that I'm blind. You're not. You went so far as to name the precise nature of my...defect."

"It was obvious. Your pupils are reactive to light. Either you are merely _pretending_ to be blind—and why would you— or your occipital cortex is damaged. Having eliminated the first possibility, only one possible conclusion remains."

"That's, ah, a bit unsettling."

"Sorry," Sherlock says. It occurs to him that he'd really rather not offend this new acquaintance. It's an unusual feeling to have.

"Why should you be? It's perfectly true, and I don't mind it being mentioned. Most people offer unwanted sympathy, act as if I'm a child, or treat me as a sort of morally fashionable accessory. It's as if my blindness makes me something other than human."

Other than human. Sherlock knows precisely how that feels. He has been, so often, made just that. A brilliant creature—except for those times when he's being a stupid creature, a horrible creature, or an excessive creature; sometimes all of these at once—but nothing human. Not a person.

Even now, he is so often too much or too little. He kills conversations effortlessly, and not always because he means to. Increasingly, he does mean to. There's so little point in trying.

Talking to Victor Trevor, though, is easy. Sherlock is forced to conclude that Victor is fascinating in a way that most people aren't.

For one thing, he's difficult to interpret. There's something timeless about him. His clothes are tasteful and not at all fashionable. Chosen by someone else, perhaps. He sounds like someone more conversant, more at ease, with the culture of the past than the present. It's clear that, despite the odds against it, he is extremely well read. Better yet, he can think.

If he thinks Sherlock is a freak, he doesn't show it.

It is only natural, then, to talk for hours, in a seamless, quicksilver flow. Sherlock forgets the dog bite, his cigarettes, and anything that isn't now, isn't them talking about absolutely everything.

As grey light streaks through the chapel windows, Sherlock stares at Victor: openly, unblinkingly—an unusual luxury—and thinks, _Your eyes see me but you do not._ The novelty is captivating.

"I hear birds," Victor says, a moment later. "Rosy-fingered dawn spoils another evening's entertainment."

"Rosy-fingered dawn?" Sherlock repeats.

"Nosiest of all the Homeric gods." Victor smiles ruefully, and adds "I suppose, though, that this means I'd best return before my tutor sends out a search party. People do seem to get unaccountably worried when they think they've misplaced me."

"Yes, of course," Sherlock says. Even to himself, he sounds disappointed.

"It is _too_ strange if I say that I'm glad this happened? Not the dog bite, obviously. The rest of it. Meeting a sort of intellectual kindred spirit, I mean." Victor is feeling about for the dog's harness as he speaks, but his face is turned towards Sherlock. "Do you agree?"

"I...yes. Certainly the best time I've ever had in a chapel. Not that the bar was set terribly high before now."

"So we should do it again?" Victor's smile is open and warm. Honest, even.

"Absolutely," Sherlock agrees, without hesitation.

"Walk me home then, so you know where to find me in future. You can see where I live and tell me if it's as hideous as I suspect."

The woodwork in the entrance is knobbily Victorian, twisted and dusty with age. Victor and Gladys ascend the (yes, hideously-carpeted) staircase, stately and small as they recede into the distance. Sherlock represses the urge to call them back.

After all, he _will_ see Victor again. He'll do anything in his power to repeat the splendour of the first good conversation he's had in months. Possibly years. He makes his way back to his own residence, drawing gratefully on his first cigarette in hours. His stomach complains, but he ignores it. He's too busy rearranging bits of his self around the concept of having, possibly, an actual _friend._ How strange. How glorious.

"Returning to your crypt, Holmes?" It's Sebastian Wilkes, an easy contender for Upper Class Twit of the Year. He's decked out in his (stupid) rowing singlet at the moment, but it's only a matter of time before he trades it all in for an undistinguished career in banking, just like his dear old dad. He is clearly none the better for a night's drinking. Sherlock gives his athletic career five months, if he's generous.

"Try not to be sick on your blades, Wilkes. I hear the other girls find it distressing."

"Fuck you," Sebastian says, but he's clearly late to practice, and doesn't have the time to engage in further vitriol.

Sherlock permits himself a small, victorious smile and walks on. He amuses himself, as he so often does, by imagining Sebastian transfixed with arrows, like the saint of the same name. It suits him.

* * *

**Notes:**

This chapter title comes to you courtesy of the Police song by the same name, which is currently on my writing playlist. Tragically under-appreciated, it contains the fabulous lines, "It is me that's on fire, not this cigarette/I was stabbed in the back by that young suffragette..."


	4. Benzene

**4: Benzene**

* * *

Sometimes Sherlock loses time. On a good day—he knows because he's measured this—he's a human chronometer, accurate to the fraction of a second. Sometimes. Sometimes things get stretched or compressed. Seconds become hours, or hours flash by as if they were seconds. It' s a matter of focus.

The glowing red numbers tell him that he's been staring at (through) this battered chemistry text for an hour.

Benzene. C6H6 . Symmetrical. Circular.

Perfect.

Pointless.

He should sleep at some point, but he hasn't managed it, yet again. Won't, probably. He's nearly finished Finch's little bottle of pemoline by now, and he's not sure how (if at all) it affects him. If he's more driven, he doesn't feel it. How much is more, when the baseline is already excessive?

What he has now is a blazing headache, and the realisation that he is consumed with restlessness and has accomplished nothing of any importance. He has been pressing informational levers like a rat in a dopamine experiment, but with less reward. He has done all the available work that matters (if, in fact, it does matter).

He knows the course material; has for years. No new information to be had there. True, he has access to more equipment, chemicals, and biological samples than he's ever had before. The challenge lies in accessing them without the constant distraction of other students, without suffering through tedious prerequisite explanations, without supervision.

Sherlock doesn't mind the university itself, conceptually. It has potential. But like a good museum, he'd enjoy it more if it were largely free of other people. Perhaps then he'd regain his trajectory.

And then what? He's starting to get dangerously bored with it all. It isn't enough to know things, to state the obvious, without credentials. He skips ahead like a scratched record track, and it's always painful to be dragged backwards, again and again, brought down to a stuttering speed so the explanation makes sense to everyone else.

Do it again, but this time, write the proofs. Don't race on to the interesting bits; plod through the irrelevancies at lecture speed.

Mycroft once said, _Try to suffer fools silently. At least for now. _

Mycroft is so much better at that. He can do patience and social niceties. He's a testament to the power of control. If _he'd_ been the one to go to the police about Carl Powers, they might have taken him seriously, never mind his age. Sherlock, of course, had charged off in a frenzy, so consumed with his certainty that he resembled an unguided rocket. They didn't give him the chance to explain it all properly. As a result, someone managed to get away with murder. Justice has been thwarted.

Sherlock, much as he fails at convention, has a very strong sense of justice. It eats at him like acid, and always has. It destroys him when people don't see that things are wrong, when they don't care. Perhaps it's easy, peaceful, not to. He doesn't know; he can't switch it off.

At the same time, there are so many things that he's told he ought to care about and can't, a void where other people find meaning. It's the curse of genius, apparently. It's not possible to fit it all in. Care too much about some things, run out of space for everything else. Information is bad enough. Sometimes he feels like he's reached maximum storage capacity. He forgets things that other people know, or he never absorbs them to begin with. He could read before he could tie his shoes. The former was a necessity, and the latter was not. He's been told he has a faulty sense of priority, but it's not something he's been able to change.

He's made it this far.

It is reassuring to know that he is finally capable of having a friend. He's tried it before, but he had to pretend to be someone else. That's not a viable option in the long term. But Victor doesn't care if he smiles at the right time. He doesn't mind it when Sherlock can't stop talking, impelled by the incredible force of his own thoughts. It probably does help that his first impression wasn't a visual one. Sherlock isn't good at the social mask (which isn't, probably, supposed to be a mask at all).

They don't agree about everything, of course, but Victor doesn't seem to find that necessary. It's odd, actually, that Sherlock has found someone he could be rude to without damage. But then, almost unaccountably, he manages not to be. Victor listens. He asks questions. He isn't ever stupid.

Talking to him is like being in a pleasant, slightly shabby room, one full of old books and interesting photographs. And that's an interesting thing in itself, the concept of a room that doesn't physically exist. Victor has elaborate maps and blueprints in his head, things that help him navigate without sight. They've discussed the Method of Loci, and Sherlock has begun to build a mental palace of his own. It's soothing, filing things away inside a complex where everything has its designated place. It's rather beautiful. It might make sanity possible, building an organisational system. It might relieve the pressure.

It's not possible, of course, to spend all their time together. They both have obligations to meet, for education's sake, if nothing else. Unlike Sherlock, Victor gives eating and sleeping a reasonable priority level. The good thing is, he can be persuaded to accommodate Sherlock into his own schedule. This is useful. It puts things into context so he doesn't miss tutorials and labs.

Now, unfortunately, Victor is revising for a massive exam. It's not something he can help him with. Sometimes Sherlock does, when the system lets him down and he needs something read aloud. "I like your voice," Victor told him, and it was glorious.

Being liked for anything is not something he expects, not after the age of five, when it became suddenly clear that Sherlock was going to be more of a trial than an asset. He has taught himself not to care what people think of him, but now that someone thinks well of him, he can see that that was something he had wanted, after all.

It's probably dangerous.

He doesn't know about Sherlock's pharmaceutical experiments, what he does to support them. Sherlock knows, without asking, that he wouldn't approve. It isn't recreational, so much as medicinal, but that might not matter. Sherlock doesn't alter his personal chemistry for entertainment; he does it for optimisation.

The sooner he can be done with university, the sooner he can be free to do things that matter. He will burn, but he will burn with purpose.

Unless he gets it wrong.

* * *

Days later, he gets it wrong.

Very wrong.

Exams ended, and Sherlock took things a bit too far. He'd finished the pemoline, and in exchange for a truly brilliant paper—for a third-year student with money, connections, and urgent party plans— he ventured into the world of amphetamines. This was a step too far, because rather than letting things wind down and sleeping occasionally like a proper human being, he elected to keep going.

He thought he got away with it. The rush receded, but then things started to look wrong. Sound wrong.

And it's bad, very bad indeed, because while he's certainly awake, it's as if his awareness has knocked a window through into a horrible place where unspeakable shapes writhe just beyond the edges of his visual field. His heart hammers in his throat to an undecided rhythm, and when he fumbles with his jacket, his hands are shaking so hard, it's nearly impossible to get his arms threaded into the sleeves.

He has to survive this. He can't do it here.

He stumbles out into the hall and it's worse. The figures in the wallpaper writhe. The door knobs all glisten like eyes, and he has to close his own. Has to brace himself against the wall, and _oh_, there are people.

"Holmes!" Sebastian's voice, superior, grating, brazen, slams into him like a fist. "Studying the wallpaper now?"

Sherlock opens his eyes, and he's there, much too close, reeking of beer and cologne and perfume and—"Just fuck off," he says, savagely.

Sebastian smiles, all silky, smooth-haired hatefulness. "Why? I live here."

Sherlock wants nothing more than to rip the smile off his face by force. He looks at him, and the words pour out in a rush. "Get away from me, Wilkes. Go back to your sad little party, with your sycophantic friends and your squalid little entertainments. Suzie Harrison, was it? Yes. In the loo—that's classy—against the door, and oh, what a disappointment! You shot off too early, and she was sick on your shoes. She'll tell all her friends, of course. So much for that social set. You'll have to try their ponies in future."

Sebastian isn't smiling anymore. "You've made a mistake, you little piece of shit," he enunciates precisely, hands forming fists. "You have no idea how big."

"Go wash your hands," Sherlock spits back at him. "They're unhygienic." For some reason, this is immensely funny, so funny it eclipses the fact that he's being threatened—more by the wallpaper than Sebastian or his filthy hands.

He laughs and he laughs, and Sebastian backs away, eyes wide. "Jesus, you should be sectioned."

"Why, so I can be stained?" Sherlock peels himself off the wall, still laughing. "Oh god, the state of your trousers. I'd suggest burning them."

He laughs all the way down the hall, only stopping once the night air touches his face.

It's almost all right, after that. He can do this. Get to the chapel, find Victor. Sit and talk until everything's fine. He can manage.

He can, until he reaches the chapel door. Then the shapes in the wood, the iron over the oak, twist like snakes before him. He's forced to stand on the steps, swaying, hands outstretched and useless. He stands, and he shakes, and the shapes dance on. It's petrifying. He could become a tree, rooted here, swaying forever, gnarled and reaching into the sky like the nymph that fled from a god.

Victor could tell him her name. He could.

"Victor," Sherlock says, and he hates the reedy timbre of his own voice, but it's all he has, so he says it again. "Victor." He repeats the sounds until they lose all meaning. He says the word until his feet break free, and he sinks down onto the steps, becomes smaller.

He is going to die here, he knows, weeping with bleak certainty. He will die, and his friend will not be able to find him, because only his outline will be left, etched against the stones. Victor won't know where to read it with his hands. He will be lost forever.

What a terrible thing that will be.

He explains all of this to Gladys when she pushes her wet nose against his hand, inquiringly. She smells strongly of dog, more than ever before. He tells her that. Gladys isn't permitted to lick his face. They've been very clear on that point in the past, but she seems to have forgotten, possibly because he's on the ground. "You're not supposed to," he begins, but someone lays a hand on his back.

"I—oh,"he breathes, because he isn't sure that English works anymore. Because very possibly, he has been speaking to Gladys in French all along. She doesn't speak it. Dogs don't. Mycroft does. _Victor_ does.

"Sherlock," Victor says, and he's there now, folded down onto the ground beside him where it might not be safe. He touches his face with pale questing fingers that smell of lemon and tea. "Sherlock," he says again, and Sherlock sobs with the overwhelming relief of being found.

"I." He tries again, and gentle fingers skim his eyes, his trembling mouth.

Gladys whines, nudging against his knee, against his hands clenched over his knees so he can hold himself together. "I've made a mistake," he says at last. "I'm not..."

"Not what?" Victor asks.

"Not safe. There's something in the...There are shapes in the door." As he says it, he winces, because of _course_ he sounds completely mad.

_Is_ mad.

"Ah," Victor says, and because that's how he is, "What sort of shapes?"

Sherlock describes them. This is difficult; they resist being pinned for his scrutiny.

"Well. I'm glad I can't see them. They sound horrid." He sighs, and squeezes Sherlock's shoulder, briefly. "I think we'd best get you back on your feet. You should sleep."

He can't, though. "I've forgotten how. I can't—it isn't—I can't go back."

"Can't go back to your room?"

"No."

"Right. So come to mine. I don't mind."

Sherlock says nothing.

"Only I don't think you should be alone," Victor adds quietly. "Not like this."

"I shouldn't _be_ like this."

"It will pass," he says. "I've every confidence it will. Come on." He straightens up, and Gladys springs to attention, leaving Sherlock small and cold against the stones.

"You don't need to look after me," he says, although he can't conceive of anything worse than remaining here on his own. "I'll be fine."

"Come with me, and we'll make sure of that." Victor waits for Sherlock to remember how to stand, and when he does, he asks, "Is this all right?" and offers him his hand.

Sherlock takes it, rather awkwardly, and it _isn't _awful, although he is acutely aware of the firm, cool pressure of Victor's fingers over his own. "I'm so sorry," he says, and follows meekly along.

Then he freezes, because there is still something flickering around the edges, leaping like tongues of dark fire in the trees.

"What is it?" Victor sounds alarmed.

"They're still there," he admits. "I thought they'd gone, but they're still there. I see them."

"Ah." Victor tightens his hand around Sherlock's. "I think your brain is interpreting visual stimuli rather badly," he says. "Can you..." He frowns, face outlined in the moonlight. He could be a stern marble emperor. It's reassuring. "Do you trust me?"

"Yes," Sherlock says, because he does. Of course he does.

"All right. Never done this, but...It could be interesting. I've got Gladys, and you've got me. I think you ought to close your eyes so we can lead you home."

"Close...my _eyes,"_ Sherlock repeats.

"Yes. If it doesn't work, we'll stop. That okay?"

Sherlock nods, curses himself, and says "Yes."

He tucks his hand around Victor's arm, and they take a few slow experimental steps. It isn't easy, but the task of synchronisation is a welcome distraction.

"It's rubbish, isn't it?" Victor says, in a matter-of-fact way, after their first stumble over a crack. "But you get used to it."

They make it together, very slowly and cautiously, to Victor's dormitory. It's a relief that Sherlock can open his eyes by then, because otherwise the stairs would present an impossible challenge. He grips the railing, just in case.

"You," Victor announces, opening the door to his room and feeling for the switch he doesn't need, "are going to lie down."

Sherlock balks at this. "What, on your bed?"

"It's that or the floor," he says dryly. "That's Gladys' domain. You'd regret it."

"Where are you going to sleep, then?"

"I'm afraid we'll have to share. Is that a problem?"

Sherlock has never shared a bed with anyone other than Mycroft, and that was over ten years ago, on a camping holiday in Sussex. Their only camping holiday. "No."

"Make yourself at home, then," Victor says, turning back to the door without his dog. "I'll be back in a moment."

Sherlock takes off his jacket and shoes, stowing them in a corner, so Victor won't encounter them catastrophically when he returns. He knows the room rather well by now: music CDs lined up on their shelves with unerring precision, the boxy terminal on Victor's desk, and stacks of books that are oddly elongated, because Braille takes up more space on the line than printed text does.

He _has_ sat on Victor's bed before. There's only one chair, after all. It just seems peculiar to lie down on it. People don't, generally, share beds with their friends. Then again, most people probably don't give themselves sleep deprivation psychosis, either. Because that's almost certainly what he _has_ done. He's lucid enough to see that now. If the snakes come back, though, it is better not to be alone.

Sherlock sighs, and scratches Gladys' head. She isn't allowed to sleep on the bed, but she is curious about his presence there.

Victor returns, bearing a small glass of water. "I thought you might need this," he says. He hasn't changed his clothes; just washed up a bit.

Sherlock sits up and accepts the glass. "I'm not sure Gladys approves," he says.

"She's just jealous." Victor removes his own shoes and socks, puts them carefully away. "Do you want the light off?"

He isn't sure, but he says yes. He pushes Gladys off the bed with an apology, and slides over towards the wall. He hopes he won't feel trapped there.

Victor switches the lights off and gets in beside him. "You're meant to get _under_ the blankets," he says, after a moment. He's in all his clothes, like Sherlock. Perhaps in sympathy.

"I suppose so." He doesn't move.

"Getting any better?"

"Maybe."

"It sounded very Lovecraftian. Nameless horrors and all that."

"It sounded what?"

He explains H.P. Lovecraft, and Sherlock isn't sure he should have asked. Victor is good at telling stories. It's the things with eyes and tentacles that do all the damage.

"Sorry," Victor says, sensing his friend going stiff with anxiety beside him. "Not the best choice on my part."

"I _did _ask." Sherlock thumps his head against his pillow.

"Don't. We shouldn't both have damaged brains."

"Might be too late."

"I think you'll detoxify with sleep. It's all just chemistry, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Well. You're good at that." Victor yawns, and adds, "Maybe just don't let it get quite so far along, next time."

Sherlock doesn't mention the drugs. He settles for an easy truth. "Moderation isn't my strong point."

"No, but at least you know that about yourself," Victor says. "One out of two isn't bad."

"One out of two what?"

"Precepts. They carved them on the pillars of the temple at Delphi."

"The oracle?"

"Exactly. One said _Know thyself."_

"And the other?"

"_Nothing in excess." _Victor yawns again. "Oh. There's a third one, actually; I forgot. Most people do. It's a bit less catchy: _Make a pledge, and mischief is nigh."_

"Don't make promises you can't keep?" Sherlock ventures.

"Seems as valid an interpretation as any I've heard."

After a long silence, Sherlock says "Thank you."

"Hmm?"

"For what you did. It was kind."

"S'all right," Victor says, the words muffled by his pillow.

"Still. You didn't have to."

"I did, really."

Sherlock listens to Victor falling asleep, to Gladys' strange whistling snore down below them. He visualises constellations, moving to silent music through the darkness. He thinks of benzene, closed and perfect.

Later, when he is seized by a sudden and pervasive feeling of dread, so terrible and inexorable that he cries out, Victor turns and strokes his hair until it goes away.

Finally, as grey light filters through the curtains, Sherlock sleeps. Victor's hand has fallen warm and open against his face.

* * *

**Notes:**

Well, I suppose _that_ has just placed this squarely in my _Songs of Expedience_ universe.

Thanks for reading! Next time, there'll be some vintage Mycroft.


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